


Better Indeed

by aban_asaara



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Grief/Mourning, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-10-06 08:17:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17341847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aban_asaara/pseuds/aban_asaara
Summary: The worst anniversary of all anniversaries, but Fenris makes it better.





	Better Indeed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vantastrophe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vantastrophe/gifts).



> Tumblr giveaway ficlet for [vantastrophe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vantastrophe), who asked for Fenris comforting their Annette Hawke on the anniversary of Leandra’s death.

“For the last time, Hawke,” Fenris says again, so close the warmth of his breath tickles her ear, “your _bath_.”

Hawke rolls over, mumbling something or other, and buries her face deeper into her pillows against the sunlight that stabs through her windows. It’s not that she doesn’t appreciate Fenris calling on her, but she’s never _asked_ for a bath, or a guest, or anything at all—she’s just so comfortable now, with her curtains drawn and her blankets piled up high, and not a thought in the world for whatever lies outside the dark warmth of her cocoon.

Fenris sighs, the mattress shifting when he pulls himself up. For a moment she thinks he’s given up, and Maker forgive her, but she’s relieved at the thought.

Then the bedsheets fly off her body.

She gasps, the cool air of her chambers a shock to her skin. By the time she finds her voice, Fenris has her scooped up in his arms already. “What are you—” she starts, scrambling to hook her arms around his neck, but there’s her answer: he’s carrying her to the adjacent bathroom, his strides long and determined. “Fenris, don’t you _dare_ —”

The rest of her sentence dies in a screech when he dumps her unceremoniously into the copper tub, nightgown, underthings and all. Bathwater sloshes over the brim, lukewarm at best. “Andraste’s flaming _knickers_ , Fenris, what’s wrong with you?!” she chokes out, clasping the lip of the tub with both hands.

Towering over her, Fenris folds his arms over his chest and cocks one dark eyebrow. “You have not left your bed for three days, and you ask what’s wrong with _me?_ ”

Hawke casts her gaze down, watching the brushed linen of her nightgown billow around her waist. “Just feeling a bit under the weather, that’s all. Dumping me into a cold bath is hardly going to help matters, is it?”

“If you had gotten out of bed when I first told you, it would not be cold now. And trust me, you need a bath.”

“And if you hadn’t forced your way into my bedroom Maker knows how, no one would care that I need a bath,” she retorts, but the reproof is hollow; there’s only so much heat left in her right now, tired as she is. She sweeps her nightgown over her head and wrings it out, then peels herself out of her sodden smalls. Might as well _bathe_ , now that she’s waist-deep in the blasted water.

Fenris hangs the wet garments for her, mouth drawn tight. Hawke feels puny watching his hands smooth the wrinkles from her clothes, her earlier words now bitter in her mouth. Somehow she can’t bring herself to voice an apology, though, so she lets her eyes wander away from him instead, tracing the hairline cracks in the porcelain tiles of the wall.

At the edge of her vision, he crouches on the floor next to her, leans an arm on the lip of the tub and swirls his fingers through the water. The silence stretches. “What is the matter, Hawke?” he finally asks.

Sunlight glimmers on the surface of the water, their reflections rippling as she watches him watching her. “Nothing.” She works her soap into a thick lather to give herself something to do, the sharp, fresh scent of bergamot rising with the foam.

Fenris does not insist. Without a word, he rolls up his sleeves to his elbows, then takes the ewer from the nearby cabinet and dips it into the bathwater, the ornate, cast-pewter swirls of the handle not unlike the lyrium wreathing the bronze skin of his forearm. She lets him tilt her head back before pouring the water into her hair, then closes her eyes; it sluices down her scalp and shoulders, soothing, the sweet song of trickling water the only sound in the room.

“Let me,” he says, taking the soap from her hands. Hawke drops them back into the water, drawing pale swirls on its surface as Fenris starts lathering her hair with gentle fingers.

Memories long gone rise to the surface. No one has washed her hair but herself since she was a child, and the familiarity, the quiet intimacy of it startles her, like she was letting Fenris glimpse some age-old family secret. Now she remembers all too well her mother rinsing her hair, telling her to keep her eyes shut lest the soap water run into them and sting; her father fashioning all sorts of fantastical hats and ridiculous beards and Qunari horns out of suds; and the twins making bathtime an ordeal every time, Carver farting in the bath and laughing at the stinking bubbles, Bethany bursting into tears whenever her brother splashed water into her face— 

Hawke’s eyes are burning now, but not from the soap. Tears trickle out from under her lashes and drip down her cheeks, sending ripples on the surface of the water. She sniffles and wipes at her face with the back of her hand, hoping Fenris hasn’t noticed anything, but the slightest pause in his movements as he rinses her hair says otherwise.

“It’s Leandra, is it not?”  he asks after a moment, his rough voice softening to a whisper.

A sob breaks out of her at the name. The sound bounces off the ceramic tiles of the bathroom, so loud, so _ugly_ she cringes, but she can’t stop now. Her shoulders shake under the ribbons of soap spiraling down her chest, and she cries the way a child cries, all gasping breaths and big blubbery sobs. Distantly, she hears the clink of the ewer on the floor tiles, then Fenris embraces her from behind, his rough-spun shirt scratching her shoulder blades.

Hawke clings to his arms. “She’s been dead three years now,” she gasps between sobs. “Maker, this is so bloody _stupid_ —”

“It isn’t,” he simply says, tightening his hold around her.

He keeps her clasped to his chest for a few long minutes while she cries, heaving against him with thick, wet sobs. Some distant part of her is mortified at the display—snot and tears running down her face, wet strands of hair sticking to his cheeks while soapy bathwater seeps into his sleeves—but she can’t bring herself to let go of him now that he’s here, her fingers twisted into the fabric of his shirt, her head tilted against his shoulder.

Three years, and it all came bubbling back as autumn gilded the trees outside, a rare letter from Bethany coming along with the wintry winds. _Away with the Wardens,_ Bethany wrote, the paper wrinkled and worn from its long travel from the Anderfels, _I can almost pretend Mother never died_ —a luxury Hawke doesn’t have, the estate brimming with reminders of Leandra’s absence, the very season mourning her with its overcast skies and soft, drizzled mists— _yet I can’t help but wish I’d never been to the Deep Roads, never had been made to join the Wardens. Maybe I could have saved her, then …_

Bethany’s familiar, elegant longhand never spells it out, but Hawke read the accusation between the lines all the same: _And whose fault is that?_

Carver dead. Mother dead. Bethany alive, and blaming her for it.

“Some Champion I make,” Hawke manages at last, her throat strained raw. She forces herself to unclasp her cramped fingers from around Fenris’s arms and resumes soaping herself up, tears still streaming down her face. “Couldn’t even protect my own family.”

Fenris sighs, the eddies of his breath soft against the knob at the top of her spine. “You forget all the good that you’ve done.”

She snorts. “And what is that?”

“I am free thanks to you,” he answers, rubbing the fragrant lather in slow circles on her back. Almost against her will, the days-old knots in her muscles begin to uncoil. “Orana is free thanks to you, and so is Isabela. Your sister, Feynriel, Lia, practically most of Kirkwall—they all live, thanks to you. Do I need to go on?”

She takes a deep, shuddering breath. “A slow death, my sister calls it. The way she talks about the Wardens, you’d think she’d rather be dead.”

“And once I thought the same, yet you have made it all worthwhile.” Hawke closes her eyes at his words, fresh tears searing their way down her face. There’s nothing she can even say to that, so instead she sinks back against him; his arms snake back around her as he lathers her stomach, then her breasts, gentle warmth blooming under his touch. “Your mother would not want you to waste away on her account,” he continues, cupping water in his palm to rinse the soap off her body. “More than anything, she would be disappointed to see you like this.”

 _I can’t spend the rest of my life mourning Bethany and Carver,_ Mother is saying now from the mists of Hawke’s memory. _They’re gone, and I can’t bring them back._

She nods, sniffling, then forces a brittle, watery smile on her face. “You’re right,” she concedes, wiping at her face—then immediately regrets that decision when one of her eyes starts burning. “Maker’s _balls_ ,” she says, clamping it shut with the heel of her hand, “I got soap into my eye. _Ow_.”

Fenris laughs under his breath at that (after how dismissive she was earlier, she lets him have it). “Let me see,” he says, tilting her head in his direction. Hawke attempts to lift her eyelid, then squeezes it shut again when the stinging only gets worse. Still, she lets him rinse it out, bottom lip sticking as the water trickles down her face. “Better?” he asks.

She blinks the tears away, then opens her eye tentatively. No pain this time, though it still waters. “Thank you, Fenris,” she answers with a nod of her head. “And … sorry for being such an arse earlier.”

Absently, she almost wipes her face with her soapy hand again, but Fenris grabs her wrist just in time. “It is no trouble,” he answers, handing her a towel instead. “Besides, I got to see you naked,” he adds, startling a laugh out of her as she dabs her face dry.

Hawke looks up from the towel to find him watching her, his chin resting on the palm of his hand, elbow propped up on the edge of tub. He looks … at home, his green eyes speckled with the light that dances on the surface of the bathwater, the slightest hint of a smile hovering on his lips. Something warm and tender unfurls inside her, cracking the layers of ice that rime her heart since the anniversary of her mother’s death, and she has her mouth tilted against his before she even knows it. Fenris kisses her with that tenderness he’s just started reclaiming, one calloused thumb brushing her cheek.

Their lips part, and he smiles, brushing wet strands of hair off her brow. “Let’s get some food into you,” he says, pulling himself up to his feet.

Hawke wraps the towel about her shoulders and steps out of the tub. “And get you out of these wet clothes,” she quips, gazing openly at the way his shirt sticks to the smooth planes of his chest.

Fenris glances down at himself, then quirks one corner of his mouth. “Feeling better, indeed.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hello on [Tumblr](https://aban-asaara.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
